Remember that in fighting for a straight spine you are fighting for youth and health and life and energy and courage and enthusiasm. You are fighting for everything that is best in life, and you should strive and struggle with all the energy you possess to win the rewards associated therewith. Each day of your life will bring difficulties, worries. Life at its best is not a bed of roses. All these various influences are inclined to make you hang your head. You may have moments when you are hopeless, when life seems forbidding and cheerless. Fight against such inclinations with all the power you possess. Struggle against such discouragements with all your might and main, not only through your mental attitude but through your determination to maintain an erect spine. Hold your head up and look the world in the face. Don't shirk your duty. Don't deviate from the path along which your best impulses and highest ideals would lead you. Life is worth while. It is filled with glorious opportunities. Reach out and grasp them as they come up. Hold your head up and be a man or a woman to the fullest extent of your abilities. CHAPTER IV: Stimulating the Source of Stamina and Vitality This is an age of short cuts. Any devious routes to the accomplishment of an object should be avoided. If you want vitality, and the vivacity, energy and enthusiasm with which it is associated, you naturally search for a method which will bring certain and quick improvements. The reasonableness and general prevalence of this demand was in my mind when I began experimentation with a view to discovering a method for stimulating what I term the source of vital power. Scientific men while delving into the marvelous secrets of physiology, have learned that the thyroid gland in some peculiar manner possesses an extraordinary influence upon vital stamina and virility. This mysterious gland is located in front of the neck, about half way between the so-called "Adam's apple" and the top of the sternum or breast-bone, where it adheres to each side of the front of the trachea, or windpipe, in a flattened form, something like the wings of a butterfly, with a connecting "isthmus." It is a "ductless" gland, its secretions apparently being taken up by absorption into the lymph, and from that into the blood.